Page 33 of With Wine Comes War

Harrison grunted, “Don’t you dare come back to work tomorrow with a‘headache’thinking we’re going to take all your meetings for you.” I hope it doesn’t come to that either.

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ALEX

I called Darius on my ride to the MMA studio and let him know that I’d have an interview set up for him sometime next week with Roman. I couldn’t believe I agreed to have dinner with him. I felt like he wasn’t going to give up, so I needed to get it over with. I don’t carewhere he decides to go, I'm not dressing up. We can go to McDonald’s for all I fucking care right now.

I needed to psyche myself up for this training, so I put on some loud high energy music, opened all the windows and the sunroof to get in the mood. I’ll make my other phone calls tomorrow.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into with this training, but I had a feeling Bruce was going to make sure I did. I got changed and went over to the counter where he was talking to some other attendees who were looking my way. He tossed something at me, and I caught it. It was a mouth guard still in the package, thank goodness. Glad they don’t share those like the boxing gloves, I thought as I tore it open. He looked down at my feet and instructed me not to bring my shoes as he pointed towards the cubbies.

I climbed into the ring where he was waiting for me. The mat was cool on my feet, and I could feel the thin layer of chalk that lingered from previous fighters.

He glanced down. “Seriously?” His eyebrows were raised as a bewildered expression crossed his face.

“What?”What’s wrong with my feet?I wondered. I just got a pedicure for god’s sake.

“Do you really want to do this to those feet?”

Do what? Why is he freaking me out?

“What’s going to happen to my feet?” I sat cross legged and tucked my feet under me to hide them.

“I don’t know but they may not look that good after!”

“I have a great team of people who take amazing care of my feet. So don’t you worry your pretty little head about my feet.” We both laughed as I kicked my legs out in front of me and wiggled my toes.

For the first fifteen minutes, we talked about the expectations we both had and how he wanted me to focus only on the moves and counter moves. He wanted me to remove my feelings altogether.

“You know this court hearing is in two weeks. That only gives me six days of training. It would take me a lifetime of training to control my emotions.” I leaned back on my hands and stared at the ceiling thinking about exactly the kind of emotions I was going to have when I saw Tanner in that courtroom, and how hard it was going to be to stay in control of those emotions knowing what I had in mind for him.

He laughed and countered, “Then how about having those emotions without associating them with a person. Let’s focus it again on just a move or counter move.” Sure, like I could think of anything other than Tanner. I closed my eyes with my head still aimed toward the ceiling above the ring trying to will Tanner out of my mind.

“I’m pretty sure I only have different levels of anger and frustration right now, so does that mean I’ll only know two moves?” He shook his head. Sarcasm is my defense against my anger.

“You’re going to have to stop talking if you want me to teach you anything. Now let’s get serious for a minute and just focus and mimic.”

I sat up and clapped my hands together and the chalk cloud floated between us as we got ready for the physical aspect of training.

I appreciated that he didn’t take it easy on me. It gets me out of my head. He taught me a lot of basic moves that I really had to concentrate on in order to put my full force into controlling my body. That helped with keeping emotions at bay. One cool move he taught me was a submission pose where you could literally pull someone’s arm out of their socket while rendering them unconscious. He guided me through it in slow motion first, demonstrating it on me. He had my arm up and half behind my head. I could feel the stretch of thetendons and see how this could get seriously painful. It was super uncomfortable, and I couldn’t figure out how to get out of it. I started to panic; he felt it and released me. When he directed me how to do it on someone else, he brought in one of the other fighters and let me practice in slow motion. I might have to repeat that one more often. I wonder if I can find any willing victims or unwilling-- hell, I’ll take what I can get. If things go bad with Roman tonight, I’ll make him a test subject.

I rolled out of the ring, stretching my whole body like a cat. I was sore already and pretty sure that I’d have bruises tomorrow.

It was about six when I got home. I grabbed a glass of wine on the way back to take a shower and turned on some music. I slipped on a pair of khaki linen high waist pants and a plain white tank top. I pulled my hair back in a ponytail. I leaned in close to the mirror to add some mascara and lip gloss. That will work, plus I’m too tired to do anymore.

I took another sip of wine and slipped my feet into some flip flops since bending down required more strength than I had at the moment. It was 6:45, so I poured another half glass of wine and thought about what a dumb idea this was. My phone buzzed with a new text message. It was Roman letting me know he was early. I breathed through the butterflies in my chest, threw back the rest of my wine and headed down to the valet.

The valet opened the car door for me while Roman waited in the car, staring straight ahead. He turned to me and smiled as if he was trying to hide a laugh and said, “Hi.”

Oh my, the alcohol fumes coming off him are pretty strong. I guess that’s why he didn’t get out of the car. Maybe I should be driving.

“Hi, wow, what kind of bourbon were you drinking?” I placed my purse on the floor by my feet and hooked my seat belt before looking at him.

“Why do you say that?”

“I can smell it on your breath.”

“Wanna taste?” He said with a smirk and a wink.

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